ANS News

Cancel your flight to Phoenix, but keep your calendar free! ANS is transforming its 2020 ANS Annual Meeting—coming up June 8-11—into an online conference. The virtual meeting will deliver the top-quality content and technical exchange you've come to expect from ANS meetings while ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved.

An interview with ANS Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer Craig Piercy is featured on E&E News’ EnergyWire online publication. Piercy discussed issues facing the nuclear community, including COVID-19 challenges at power plants, the role of nuclear in the future, and politics on Capitol Hill.

ANS Young Members Group Chair Harsh Desai

The ANS Young Members Group has developed a new live webinar series that is free to all, and Harsh Desai is excited. “We have a great opportunity to highlight our national laboratory infrastructure, which is a pinnacle of innovation in nuclear science, technology, and engineering,” said Desai, chair of the YMG. “We’re giving each of the national labs the opportunity to highlight their mission, key projects, and rising stars, and we’re also giving members of the YMG executive committee valuable leadership experience building and moderating the webinar panels.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced 2020 ANS Student Conference organizers to cancel plans to meet in person on the campus of North Carolina State University, they already had a full calendar of events and hundreds of registered attendees. While the meeting could be rescheduled, graduating students who had signed up to participate in the Student Design Competition would miss the chance to present their research. Finding a way for those students to present their work was a priority.

ANS Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer Craig Piercy has submitted testimony on the administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2021 Department of Energy budget to the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees on Energy and Water Development, urging congressional appropriators to increase funding for nuclear-related programs. The testimony was submitted on March 31.

Dear ANS members,

As you know, the staff and I are in the midst of implementing a significant overhaul of ANS operations, as guided by the letter and spirit of ANS Change Plan 2020.

We are off to a good start. We have changed the ANS organization chart to knock down silos and bring fresh leadership to our Publications and Digital Technology Departments. We have embarked on a major overhaul of our IT infrastructure to leverage the advantages of cloud computing and significantly improve our cybersecurity posture. Our first visible improvement will be a modernized ANS website, scheduled to go live for members and the general public in a matter of weeks, followed by digital access to Nuclear News and related content this summer.

Progress is continuing, both inside our Society and in the areas we serve. The Executive Committee is committed to working with the ANS staff to implement the initiatives set forth in ANS Change Plan 2020. You may recall that our plans included an operational review of ANS headquarters. Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy has announced organizational changes that went into effect in early February. We made some difficult decisions, but ones that will have a positive impact on our operating budget and improve the delivery of services to our members. I have tremendous confidence in the dedication of the staff and the vision of our new leaders. This has been a year of tremendous uncertainty and change, and I am grateful for the resiliency and focus of our staff.

OSU Student Section Faculty Advisor Samuel Briggs accepted a certificate from ANS President Marilyn Kray (foreground). From left to right, section officers pictured are Matthew Hageman, Andrew Ritacco, Brandon Kamiyama, Taighlor Story, Lucia Gomez-Hurtado, Elizabeth Jurgensen, Maren Arneson, and Stephanie Juarez.

The ANS Oregon State University (OSU) Student Section hosted a 50th anniversary celebration on March 3 with ANS President Marilyn Kray as their guest.

“The officers did an amazing job and deserve all the credit for organizing a very successful 50th anniversary event,” said Samuel Briggs, an assistant professor in OSU’s School of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and the student section’s faculty advisor.

Following a dinner that featured a slideshow of historic OSU photos, students had a chance to pose questions to an expert panel. Kray took part in the panel together with NSE Emeritus Professor and ANS Past President Andrew Klein (2016–2017), NSE School Head and Professor Kathy Higley, and NSE Associate School Head and Professor Wade Marcum. They were asked about future obstacles and prospects for the nuclear industry, public outreach and advocacy, and nuclear engineering career development. “Local members asked some great questions of the panel—even I learned something!” Briggs said.

When Navigating Nuclear’s latest virtual field trip (VFT) debuted online in February during Engineers Week, students in classrooms around the country learned about nuclear advancements happening right now at Idaho National Laboratory, on technologies including advanced reactors, TRISO fuel, and space power systems. The video, titled “Nuclear Reimagined,” highlights diverse applications of nuclear technology and career opportunities in the nuclear sector and puts a spotlight on the work of ANS members Heather Chichester, Paul Demkowicz, and Stephen Johnson at INL.

Novich (left) and Renfrow (right)

Kaelee Novich, a senior at Boise State University, and Robert Renfrow, a junior at Lipscomb University, have been selected to participate in the 2020 Washington Internships for Students in Engineering (WISE) program with the sponsorship of ANS. Both students are majoring in mechanical engineering.

Novich and Renfrow will join students sponsored by other engineering organizations for nine weeks, from May 31 until August 1, in Washington, D.C. While there, they will meet with leaders in the U.S. Congress, the administration, and federal agencies, including the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Each intern will conduct research and present a paper on an engineering-related public policy issue of interest to their sponsoring organization. The papers will be published online in the WISE Journal of Engineering and Public Policy.

Lesson plans for middle school and high school students make up only one part of the compelling nuclear science education resources that Navigating Nuclear offers for today’s classrooms. ANS’s K–12 curriculum reaches students with virtual field trips (see article that begins on page 1), career resources, and STEM project starters to get students excited about nuclear science and its applications.

Alyse Huffman is the 2019 ANS Congressional Fellow

During my time on the Energy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, I’ve had the pleasure of covering a wide variety of issues. The jurisdiction of the subcommittee includes nonmilitary research, development, demonstration, and commercial application activities at the Department of Energy. My portfolio covers issues in the energy and water nexus, geothermal energy, water power technologies, nuclear energy, geoengineering, biological and environmental research (including low-dose radiation research), and nuclear physics. I’ve led the committee’s staff work in these areas, which has included writing legislation and shepherding bills through committee markups and the legislative process. In addition, I’ve been the staff lead on hearings and have held countless meetings with stakeholder groups on clean energy topics.

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (P.E.) licensure in nuclear engineering is this fall, and now is the time to sign up and begin studying with the help of a new online module program from ANS.

“Licensure is the mark of a professional,” said Joshua Vajda, chair of the ANS Professional Engineering Examination Committee (PEEC). “It’s a standard recognized by employers and their clients, by governments, and by the public as an assurance of dedication, skill, and quality,” he added.“It not only enhances your stature, it shows commitment to the profession and demonstrates heightened leadership and management skills.”

ANS President Marilyn Kray has expressed support for the continued recovery operations at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which sustained damage in the aftermath of a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Kray sent a letter on March 3 to Hiroshi Kajiyama, head of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), about the work of the ministry’s Subcommittee on Handling of the ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) Treated Water and the findings of a February 2020 subcommittee report.

To raise awareness about safe, clean, and reliable nuclear energy and enrich the experiences of students in nuclear science and technology, ANS student sections around the country will soon be hosting a first-ever 5K fundraiser.

“Nuclear Power: Let’s Keep It Running” is launching on Earth Day (April 22) and will consist of an online donation platform where student sections can form teams, organize runs, and connect to donors within their communities and throughout the country. Proceeds will support ANS student section activities and the ANS Student Program.

The Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C), a special committee of the ANS Standards Board, has launched a Community of Practice (CoP) to support risk-informed, performance-based (RIBP) methods in ANS standards. The CoP consists of interested professionals who can contribute to standards development priorities identified in the Standards Committee Strategic Plan and in ANS Position Statement #46, “Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Regulations for Nuclear Power Plants.”

Certificates commemorating 25 or 50 years of ANS membership are being delivered to the members listed below. The Gold certificate recipients are celebrating 50 years of ANS membership in 2020, having joined in 1970. The Silver certificate recipients, who joined ANS in 1995, have maintained ANS membership for 25 years.

ANS Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy offered ANS members an update on Change Plan 2020 on February 24. If you missed the live webinar, you can visit the ANS Member Center to view it now.

The American Nuclear Society was formally accepted as a Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy Future (NICE Future) initiative partner organization in January, joining ten countries and 14 partner organizations to direct the global conversation about the roles nuclear energy can play in clean energy systems of the future.

The ANS Standards Committee has just published ANSI/ANS-19.6.1-2019, “Reload Startup Physics Tests for Pressurized Water Reactors” (revision of ANS-19.6.1-2011). The standard, approved December 19, 2019, provides guidance for verifying the nuclear characteristics of a commercial pressurized water reactor core following a refueling or other alteration of the reactor core for which nuclear design calculations are required. The standard provides the minimum acceptable startup physics test program, while recognizing that additional tests may be required by special design features of a particular core.